Generally, the dramatic growth in use of the Internet has created greater opportunities for service providers to introduce new services to customers which are tailored to take advantage of the increased speed and efficiency offered by the Internet.
One such area involves processing of customer account data relating to services rendered, and generating associated billing reports for each customer. Of particular concern to the present invention is providing access to customer billing and inventory data to users located both in and outside a service provider such as a telephone company.
To date, processing and billing arrangements rely on traditional mailing of hardcopy bills to customer premises, and automated telephone and service support staff to allow users access to billing and inventory data. As such, known arrangements have not otherwise tapped the potential for increased efficiency and convenience offered by a graphical user interface (GUI) via the Internet. Alternative arrangements have been introduced, but are typically packaged on a CD-ROM or diskette and are severely limited in capabilities to provide enhanced customer service. In other words, these known arrangements do not provide any drill down capability, entry of customer data, or comprehensive database access and management.